Edward Falzon Talk Tonight

In about an hour I'm going to a talk by Edward Falzon (his website here). Currently he is on a book tour, and this is his only scheduled stop in Ohio.

Who is Edward? He is the author of the book Being Gay is Disgusting, which has a lot of fun paraphrasing the chapters of the Pentateuch.

And his talk tonight?

To officially launch this "Biblical Morality" book-series, Edward is embarking on a 59-city American tour from July 2012. On the tour, he will demonstrate that we're good people in spite of the Bible, not because of it, and that it's time to set this Iron-age nonsense aside, for good.

Should be a fun and (slightly?) irreverent listen.

Time to Converge

For dinner tonight, I'm going to a grill-out at a a group I am helping my Christian and atheist friends take wing. The idea was started before I came along, but it has a philosophy behind it that I can get behind, and you should too no matter your political or theological position.

The group that is meeting tonight is called Convergence, and it's trying to be interfaith without the barrier of having to have a faith (other terms I have heard used an inter-worldview and trans-faith). And basically, if you like intellectual discussion and trying to find common ground, this is great. If you prefer being divisive, then you will probably not feel comfortable.

Does this go against the ideas growing up in A+? I don't see a necessary contradiction because the folks I work with hold to much the same values as I do (as described by Richard Carrier for A+): rationality, compassion, and personal integrity. Sure I don't agree with the Christians about God and Jesus, but they don't evangelize through Bible-slapping, and on social issues we seem to feel similarly. One of the earlier discussions the group had was whether it is okay for us to live with luxury while so much of the rest of the world has decrepit living conditions (to put it nicely). These are conversations that can and do happen at atheists meetings as well, but to make the changes we want it is necessary to talk to the other 80+% of the country.

This won't reach out to all religious folks, especially those that love their Jesus but don't seem to think the "love my neighbor" stuff is all that literal. Again, the values described above seem to be a prerequisite for making such a group work, be productive, and create a community that unites rather than divides.

Currently the group exists only in Columbus, as far as I know, but we hope that it expands. If you are interested, let me know as we want to make organizations like this grow. It's great for atheists to work with the religious to show we don't all eat babies. It's great for the religious because it shows that the next generation is more tolerant, more reasonable, and more inviting than the previous generation. And I only want that to keep getting better.

But for now, got's to gets to the grillin'!

The Star of Bethlehem & Zeitgeist - Video

As practice in my video editing and to make the material more viewable, I now have made my previous blog posts about the Star of Bethlehem and its treatment in the film Zeitgeist into a short YouTube video.

 

Hope you enjoy!

What is Faith? Baby Don't Hurt Me

Over at Skeptic Blogs, there is a rather long but reasonably thorough look at an attempt to make the term "faith" not antithetical to reason. I just want to give a bit of historical background to the first millennium of Christian understanding of reason and faith.

Scholars that have studied the interaction of science and religion often take an look at the first centuries of Christendom (in periods often called Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages), and David Lindberg is probably the best known and most respected on the subject. What he concluded is basically the thesis of Augustine, that science/philosophy/reason are the handmaiden of religion/theology. Reason can be used to help in theology, but it cannot be used to undermine it. (See his essay in God and Nature.) That seems to have been the position of Christians from earliest times to the Middle Ages and beyond as well.

And that is inherently non-rational: to say that you cannot use reason to see if a major aspect of research or understanding of the world has the gravitas it deserves is obviously not the way to go and be called rational. And that is what the faith part means: trust this source, and do not question it.

Now, it is possible to do science under this sort of constraint (so long as it doesn't contradict the faith at any point), but it also doesn't encourage it. And that is part of why the Scientific Revolution came rather late, even though the Greeks and Romans were doing science. This sort of problem is well-illustrated in Richard Carrier's chapter on ancient science in The Christian Delusion, as well as proving that Christianity was not responsible for modern science as some have argued.

Perhaps it is no wonder then that the early Christians didn't provide reasons for their faith, but did more to insult opponents and beg disciples to believe in things unseen and evidence hoped for (Hebrews 11:1). And that sort of strategy can get you hurt.

Praying the Lies Away? Barton Still Wrong

Previously I mentioned that pseudo-historian David Barton had his book pulled by a Christian publishing company because they lost confidence in its contents. Not least because he makes things up. And of course he is trying to strike back at his detractors. He appeared on Bryan Fischer‘s American Family Radio.



Sorry if you watched that.

But here is the interesting bit to me. Barton attacks the authors of a book that debunks his work, and those authors are themselves conservative Christians. Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President by Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter goes through the sorts of myths people like Barton have propagated (also nicely debunked by Chris Rodda's Liars for Jesus), and Throckmorton gets the biggest barrage by Barton and Fischer. It's odd they attack Coulter less since he is a political science professor, while Throckmorton is a psychologist. Why?

Because Throckmorton used to think that you could change a person's sexual orientation. Yeah, the idea of "pray the gay away." Now, one thinks that such an idea can be refuted simply by asking yourself when you choose to be attracted to the opposite sex (I think it was a Tuesday for me), but Throckmorton did his research over years and finally concluded that it doesn't work. And that is a sin that discredits historical analysis?

To quote Fischer:

[Throckmorton] believed in reparative therapy, for instance, for homosexuals… and it seems like when he changed his mind about that, when he switched sides on the issue of homosexuality, then it was inevitable that in the course of time, he was going to be an enemy of the Truth, basically, in all of its forms.

Oh, the non sequiturs!

Has the Religious Right becomes so anti-empirical that any deviation from their artificial dogma it discounts everything they say?

This is why I make my creed of "where does the evidence point", because anything else just hurts my brain.

Now, this isn't the only counter-attack Barton and his allies have performed. There are also some things going on between Chris Rodda and lackey Rick Green. Green said he would post any substantive response to Barton's work that showed a factual error. And as is predictable to the dogmatic, an attack on an idol is automatically wrong. And Barton is the same; PhD-holding folks that agree with him are right, and PhD-holding folks that don't are liberal, commie, socialist, god-hating, baby-eating monsters that are destroying True America.©


Nonetheless, that a significant number of conservatives are loosing faith in Barton that he can't keep his books on the shelf means things are going against him. Will he be replaced? Stay vigilant.

More on the Star and Zeitgeist

Since my last post about how the Star of Bethlehem has been interpreted by Acharya S and in the Internet film Zeitgeist, there has been some predictable backlash from those that defend the position. Very natural, and hopefully dialogue can happen. A response on Freethought Nation was posted on in the comments, and I responded there. I wanted to direct those at the forum the response came from, but it seems registration to that forum is currently not possible. Not sure why, but it seems that if I make my response here they will notice. And perhaps they can hook me up to their system. We'll see.

Nonetheless, the response was actually not too productive a start and avoided pretty much all my substantive points. So my response can to trod through the mud first. I am accused of not being studied enough in the subject matter and other inadequacies on my part. The only error I made was thinking that Acharya's first name was Dorothy, which is apparently incorrect (she has not made her first name public). I changed that in my blog post, but beside that, no error has been pointed out on my part.

The author of the attacking post also took a look at my article about the Star and significantly misunderstood its purpose. I did not look at older mythology because the subject of the matter was how the Star was interpreted especially in a scientific context. It was not about where the story really came from, beside giving the current view of mainstream scholars. And while my article has been referenced by the Apologia Archive (as a critique of the version of the Star by Rick Lawson), I am in fact not a Christian trying to defend the faith. My purpose also wasn't to attack religious belief but to give a history of how the Star had been understood and how modernist attempts to make it something naturalistic is outside the mainstream.

But let's get to the post I wish to respond to.


Let me work backward about what is said. Firstly, I actually do read Greek and Latin, as I did take college courses so I could conduct the research I have published. (My Hebrew is far to weak to talk about.) Moreover, my paper on the Star of Bethlehem was cited extensively earlier in that forum, so you can see that I have studied theological literature and the interpretation of the Star for the last 2000 years. Since that made it through peer-review among those that are theologically mindful, that should give me a bit of credit about when I speak of things related to the subject. And unfortunately, that is more than can be said for Acharya. I bet she could get some things published, and I would be very interested to see her do so. I bet she would move conversations in interesting ways. Let me know if that happens.

Now, this attack on Richard Carrier's criticism is ultimately beside the point of what I said about the Star (and Carrier said nothing of it either). It's also a bit disturbing that the poster linked to Acharya's response to Carrier, but not to Carrier's re-response, which I did post in my blog. And unfortunately, Carrier's points were not refuted by Acharya, though Carrier did make a correct or two (a sign of a good scholar: someone that fixes their mistakes rather than doubles-down).

Now, getting to actual criticism of me: for my response, I did not depend on anyone except Acharya for her position. I pointed to the link on the Star from her, which was based on her book Christ in Egypt, so the accusation has no grounding. Next, my use of the term 'astrology' is apropos if it is not limited to the meaning of horoscopes. Astrology is broadly about learning from the stars, and it is an offshoot of star worship. The ideas of astrology are certainly part of at least some religions, especially notable in the artifacts of Mithraism. And this is why I did not say "astrology as we know it today" (emphasis original) as the poster presents; if words have to be literally put into my mouth to make my statements false, then I am in pretty good standing. Admittedly, I could have been clearer and considered the misconceptions this would bring up, so I will try to not make that mistake in the future.

A later posted also made hay about the difference between horoscopic predictions and astrotheology, about how refuting one doesn't refute the other. And since I did not attack horoscopes but only said how the thesis depended on the interpretation of the sky (the basic essence of astrology), it is an attack that has nothing to do with what I have said.

As for using old scholarship to justify her stance: when it comes to the webpage she was for the Star, that is in fact true. Her only footnote is to an encyclopedia from 1915. Her other internal citations are rarely from someone in Egyptology. J. Gwyn Griffiths was an Irish poet, Barbara Walker is trained as a journalist. There is also a citation from a long-dead French philosopher, Simone Weil. And it is really odd to attack people for pointing out her reliance on old scholarship because in the introduction to Suns of God (which I own and have read) she defends her use of old scholarship. That doesn't mean all her sources are old and out of date, but the ones she needs the most for this thesis are.

For example, she cites NO primary sources for calling the belt of Orion the "Three Kings". None. In another of her writings she shows the symbol for Orion that has three loops, but there is nothing but speculation to say that three loops represent kings. Moreover, the heliacal rising of Sirius (Sothis) is first and foremost connected to the resurrection of Osiris and the flooding of the Nile. The rising sun was connected to Horus, but there is nothing connecting it to his birth, let alone on Dec 25. Again, Acharya has NO primary sources for that, only speculations. While she does cite proper Egyptologists from recent years, they are for points that do not support her substantive premises. This makes them window dressing: using good scholarship to disugise the reliance on bad. If she wants to improve her scholarship, she has to jettison ALL the bad, not lump it in with the good. Otherwise, how can a lay reader know the difference?

But let's get to the points I made that were not even attempted a refutation. It is a fact that Orion's belt had set below the horizon before sunrise on the winter solstice, so it cannot point to anything, let alone the sun. Since the hypothesis makes it integral that the belt of Orion point through Sirius to the morning Sun, that this point is false is utterly decisive. Perhaps you don't believe me about the astronomy? Well, here are a couple of screen shots to help. (I am using the planetarium software Stellarium 0.11.2)

This is a view of the night sky as seen on December 25, 5 BCE in Alexandria, Egypt (the view is very similar to that in Jerusalem). As can be seen, the belt is on the western, setting horizon, and the sun is not yet up. In fact, it is four hours away, as seen here.

Notice the time mark in both screen captures to see that four hours passed, and even Sirius is below the horizon (it set about three hours before sunrise). Try it out on your own planetarium software if you want (I also used a NASA database to get similar results). The fact is, the astronomy is wrong.

Perusing some of the other threads at Freethought Nation seem to indicate that, at least to the posters (don't know about Acharya herselt) this isn't a problem; so long as the best and Sirius pointed at the Sun before sunrise that is enough. But then that begs the question of why make December 25 so special? Any date after the heliacal rising of Sirius would have been more interesting as Orion and Sirius would have been directly over the Sun in the morning (though probably not visible due to the dawn's early light). But this would mean any time since late July would have been just as good or better than December 25. And if Orion need not be in the sky at sunrise, then any date would have the same alignment quality. The excuse then doesn't work and makes no date special.

One potential point to consider is how low the Sun gets in the sky. Because of the angle of the earth, the height the Sun gets in the sky during the day varies throughout the year. So this means the alignment between sun and Orion's belt is better on some days than others. But when is it best? Well, from what I can see, it is best some time in September or October.

So once again, nothing suggest that December 25 is special based on this hypothesis. But that assumes the hypothesis has anything else to back it up.

Let's also highlight a few more facts ignored:

• It is a fact that the Magi were not called Kings or numbered three until centuries later (other numbers include 12). If they were not called kings originally or three in number, then any alleged Egyptian comparison will not explain the original story, only later adaptations at best.
• It is a fact that Dec 25 was not celebrated as the birthday of Jesus until much later, and other dates nowhere near the solstices were proposed before Dec 25 came into use. (Also, it is NOT the case that only Dec 25 is celebrated as his birthday today; Armenian Christians still hold to another tradition, just as old, that Christ was born on Jan 6.) Again, you cannot explain the original story of Matthew with details that are not part of the Jesus story centuries after the fact.
• There is no primary evidence at all that says the stars of Orion's best were called king, and Acharya provided none.
• There is no primary evidence that Horus was born (or conceived) on Dec 25, and Acharya provided none.
• Related to this, the heliacal rising of Sirius happens no where near the summer solstice.
• And lastly, there is a far superior and well-supported position that explains things (and I hope to add to this scholarship in the near future).

When you have a hypothesis that doesn’t have very good evidence for it, and another with much better supported evidence, there is a particular way you should lean. Moreover, Jewish literature is far more likely to influence the early Christians than ancient Egyptian, so there is prior probability in favor of a Jewish background for the story than Egyptian. And no mumbling about my ineptitudes can change that.

Now unless Acharya (or anyone else) can address these points, then the hypothesis is very, very dead. The false astronomy is itself a deal-breaker.

David Barton on Jefferson too Full of Lies for Publisher

David Baron is a famous (infamous?) pseudo-historian, specializing in early American history. He is a favorite of the Religious Right because he tries to argue from the primary documents that the US was founded as a Christian nation, on Christian values, and not on Enlightenment values. And, heaven forbid, none of the Founding Fathers were deists; in his interpretation, they were nigh-on evangelical (not the denomination, but in the attitude of spreading the gospel).

He has written several books before, and they had be addressed by historians as full of mischaracterization and even fabrications. One of the best volume to read just for that is Chris Rodda's book Liars for Jesus (currently in its first volume). It is thorough, and you will learn some real American history while you're at it.

Nonetheless, Barton published a new book which pretty much repeated the same old, same old, in The Jefferson Lies. The 'lies' were supposed to be those things promulgated by liberal professors to disguise the real Thomas Jefferson. And wouldn't you know it, the book isn't better researched than before. NPR did a review of it, and the verdict is very bad.

How bad? As bad as the publisher pulling the book from shelves! The publisher, Thomas Nelson, received complaints from multiple sources, and then they pulled the book due to lack of confidence in its content.

This may not be the end of the book's life, however. Barton can go to another publisher (there are plenty of publishing houses that don't mind this sort of criticism and even thrive on it), and he could self-publish. Nonetheless, this is a significant and public blow to his credibility. Will it sting long?

You decide!

Hat tip to Hemant Mehta, thanking Greg for the links.

Big Shift for the Catholic Church

Just in the news is that the Pope says it is morally justified to use condoms. Now, it isn't for just anything, but only for stopping the spread of diseases like AIDS. This is remarkable since in the past the Catholic Church would not support condom use in sub-Saharan Africa which has been enveloped by HIV.

The example given by the Pope is a male prostitute trying to reduce the spread of infections, and this is something the vicar for Christ on Earth has said previously, so the shift isn't that radical. This means that the rash of American bishops that attacked the Obama Administration for making them have to provide birth control via insurance for non-Catholic employees are not out of line with Vatican policy. No excommunications are going to happen on that front any time soon.

Nonetheless, it may be a sign that the old institution will get on with the rest of the modern world and not have to have every act of sex have to produce at least one child. It also means that, hopefully, the Church won't keep saying that condoms make the AIDS epidemic worse.

The End is Nigh (Again)

For the last several months, there has been an interesting, small Christian group going around preaching the end of the world is coming. Of course, these sorts of claims have been taking place since, well, the earliest years of Christianity. "This generation will not pass," said Jesus in Mark 13, referring to the tribulations before the Kingdom of God came with power into the world. Since it didn't happen in the lifetime of Paul and the apostles, the doomsday prophecy has been reinterpreted so many times it is hard to count. It has been done by the scholarly as well as the grossly incompetent.

For example, in the 15th century, the French cardinal Pierre d'Ailly used biblical verses as well as the top scientific predictor of the day--great-conjunction astrology--to say the end of the world was not in his time but in a few centuries from then (the 17th century or so, if I remember correctly). Obviously, it didn't happen then. D'Ailly's goal was more to alleviate the stress he felt from fearing the end was coming because of the near civil war going on in the Catholic Church when there were at one time three rival popes all declaring themselves the real pope (see the Great Schism). But not everyone else.

Jim West has recounted an interesting story from the early Reformation period concerning the Anabaptists. This particular group from the early 16th century in the town of Munster was incredibly nuts by any standard. Their leaders shunned all worldly knowledge, they were themselves poorly educated, and when they took control of the town they burned all the books in the city library, save the Bible (or course). Instituting polygamy and wife swapping, the main figures declared themselves king, the town the New Jerusalem, and you can bet they saw themselves as making the Kingdom come. Their charismatic leader, Jan Matthijs, thought himself invincible, so when the combined Catholic and Protestant armies came to regain control of the town from the Anabaptists, Matthijs left the city walls to fight and was killed almost instantly. Oops!

One can also mention the Millerites in America. They predicted the end of the world twice in the 1840s, and failed both times. That group has now become the Seventh Day Adventists and don't predict exact days for the end times (though they say it's coming). The Taiping Rebellion in China also has apocalyptic fervor, leading to millions killed in the mid-19th century. And lest we forget, there was good ol' Hal Lindsey whose 1970 book The Late, Great Planet Earth predicted the end of the world for 1988. Damn that Ronald Reagan! Well, that didn't quite happen, but Hal is still talking about the Apocalypse as coming around the corner. Hey, he may not be wrong this time!

I have hardly covered all the failed predictions of the end of the world by various Christian figures and groups, but it gives a context to place yet another such collection of people. I mention this new group, the Family Radio broadcasting ministry, because they have been putting up billboards all over the country, and recently have come to my university with signs, pamphlets, and all. They even brought the kids. Education? Not when the Rapture is coming in less than a month! Wait, that soon? Well, no wonder their enthusiasm. They predict the end will come on May 21, 2011. And that is the day after Draw Muhammad Day, so God has good planning.

So, how did this group come up with their calculation? First, they figure the Great Flood happened in 4990 BCE (they use BC, but I have to piss them off), and that because a day is a thousand years to God, there is 7000 years between this even and the Second Coming. From another verse concerning the Flood, that event took place in the second month on the 17th day. So, looking at the Hebrew calendar, they find that Iyar 17 is May 21 this year.

How do they figure the Flood happened in 4990 BCE? It's strange considering Archbishop Usher figured that the world was created in 4004 BCE, so I wonder what their calculation is. If there is about a thousand year difference in time between events, that will throw a wrench into the calculating machines. Moreover, why seven thousand years? Why not one thousand years, or ten? Beside, the Bible does not say 1000 years is a day to God, but that 1000 years is like a day to God; making exacting calculations from a simile is a bit silly. And why take the date from the Flood? Why not from the Crucifixion? It looks like a lot of work just to get a date close to modern times.

Oh, and getting an exact day, that rather unbiblical. Again, Jesus said in Mark 13:32 that no one knows the day or hour, not even the angels in heaven or the Son. If Jesus' doesn't know, then how does some pastor? Strange that this verse isn't mentioned in the pamphlet. Hal Lindsey at least had an interesting way out. He didn't say what day the end way, just what week! Such logic is so irritating, it makes you think that God would delay the Apocalypse just to mess with Hal.

Nonetheless, the interesting part will be when the day passes and everything is running like it did the day before, just as it happened every single time the end was predicted. I suspect one of two things will happen. First, the group will recalculate the date of the event; that is what the Millerites first did. But when that fails again, the second possibility will take place. The prophecy will be reinterpreted. Perhaps the end did happen, and Jesus actually did come back but no one saw him. That is what preterists believe, that Jesus did come back in 70 CE. Jehovah Witnesses are similar, except Jesus came to rule in 1914. I would bet that this new group will due something along these lines eventually. What they likely won't do is give up their faith. The sociological evidence is compelling that that is the very thing we can expect not to happen if this group has other things to fall back on. Considering that Christian beliefs are far more complex than just hoping for the end times, there is plenty for the group to keep them together and find a way to work about this disconfirming evidence. However, I do have to worry about the kids. I doubt there will be something like Jonestown or Waco, but who knows what sorts of mental issues they may have in such an organization.

So, I'm looking at May 21 as a good date to have a party. It is a Saturday, and if worse comes to worse, at least I had a good last time before all Hell breaks loose. Unless there isn't a Hell anymore...

Liar, Liar, Faith on Fire

The news of the continuing Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal is rather unending and new facts about what certain figures did and did not do, what they knew and when they knew it, and what the current authorities are planning to do about these issues. There is so much scandal here it makes Nixon look insignificant. And the scale only increases and stories of abuse are found in most every continent.

What kind of credibility can such an organization have when it comes to cases of morality and public policy? When it comes right down to it, the Catholic hierarchy has proven they don't care about morals, but about their power. One need only consider medieval history with its crusades and inquisitions to gain lands and break resistance against the authority of the Pope.

And of course, there is lying for power. Recently, the Pope made a pilgrimage to the Shroud of Turin. This is a well-demonstrated medieval fake, yet

He said that keeping up that hope is the message of the Shroud of Turin, in which disciples see their sufferings "mirrored" in the suffering of Christ, CNA reported.

The shroud is a message of hope, mirroring the suffering of Christ? How is a known forgery, produced in order to bilk people of their money a symbol of hope? It's a symbol of corruption and greed, and the Pope wishes to use it as a source of religious power. He wants to use a lie, a proved lie at that, as justification for faith.

If your faith is dependent upon medieval lies, you have another thing coming.

Then again, there is a long history of using lies to get people to believe what they want you to in the Christian tradition. For example, Eusebius, a Christian historian in the fourth century, believed that telling falsehood was good for the state. Eusebius is also one to use forged documents for his points, such as letters from Jesus (History of the Church, 1.13), and he may be the creator of the testimony of Jesus in Josephus (the Testimonium Flavianum).

Apparently, that ninth commandment is not so unbreakable, at least in a long line of tradition by an organization that now tries its best to cover up the molestation of children by its priests, silenced by its bishops and cardinals, and now one of those cardinals is pope. I guess when your system is this corrupt, veneration of false idols is hardly a problem.